Biography

Hervé Celcal starts learning classic piano at the age of 7 on his native island Martinique (France, West Indies) and continues his lessons at L’ école normale Alfred Cortot in Paris (France). He meets the jazz pianist Bernard Maury, who proposes to join his teaching staff in the school he has just founded . But Hervé is already on stage doing keyboards for various artists (Oliver Ngoma , Sally Nyolo , Admiral T doing the orchestralarrangements for his live shows , Dédé St. Prix …)

Today , Hervé Celcal is working as a pianist on a very personal acoustic project inspired by the traditional music of Martinique, the bèlè : « bel air for piano » , « bèlè ba piano » in french creole. A sort of franco-anglo-creole title for a universal project.

Within the bèlè, which is intimately linked to drums, Hervé introduces a novelty, his instrument : the piano and all the modern aspects of jazz spirit.

Since he didn’t know how to play drums (at a time when drums were less valorised than today ),Hervé worked at recreating the same sounds and evoking the melodious chants of the singer and « the repondè » (the chorists) with his piano.

That’s when the different bèlè rhythms impregnate Herve’s compositions : woulé mango, ting bang , beguine bèlè , to the extent that even on solo piano , they live on with force. He also honored the different musical forms issued from this local culture : beguine, mazurka , chouval bwa, quadrille, creole waltz. This already very rich body fusions very well, thanks to the genius of belè wich recreates jazz, its harmonies, its improvisations, basically : its spirit.

Beyond his personal path as a composer, Hervé Celcal wants to initiate a pedagogic project. Today, Herve wants to make traditional bèlè culture more popular by transmitting the result of his research on piano. As it has been by musicians from other cultures, like Cuba for instance, and as in classical music or jazz, bèlè could one day be taught on piano. The edition of the notes as desired by Hervé (unusual for music from Martinique) is part of this approach.